


Afterthought

by Catchclaw



Series: Mental Mimosa [110]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Western, M/M, Reunions, Separations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-13
Updated: 2018-08-13
Packaged: 2019-06-26 19:58:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15670242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catchclaw/pseuds/Catchclaw
Summary: He rode into town after sunset and tied up outside the boardinghouse just north of Fisher’s Grocery.





	Afterthought

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Sheriff AU. Prompt from this [generator](http://colormayfade.tumblr.com/generator).

He rode into town after sunset and tied up outside the boardinghouse just north of Fisher’s Grocery. He was a battered man in a black hat whose horse had seen better days and he was in town less than twenty minutes before word made its way to the sheriff, who, frankly, resented the interruption of his evening prayers. That’s what he called his quiet time every night, in the brief interregnum between the bustle of the daylight hours and the uncertain tensions of the night, but Steve didn’t spend much of his time praying. He read, mostly: the latest paper from Denver, maybe, or some Dickens; sometimes, against his better judgement, the Bible--anything he could get his hands on that involved the march of words across the page. It was a chance to get lost in other people’s thoughts and that, for the sheriff, was a blessing. He spent too much time in his own head as it was.

So when word came by banging fist on his door that there was a stranger in town, in this very boardinghouse, he was none too happy to have to set his book aside. But he showed none of that to his landlady, greeted her with the same smile, the same courtesy that he would’ve shown his own mother.

“There’s something about him,” Mrs. Hill said, her usually steady heads moving around her bosom apace, “something in his eyes, Steve. It’s like he’s looking right through you, as if you’re not there at all.”

Steve scrubbed a hand over his mouth and scratched a little at his whiskers. “Is he a veteran, maybe? You see any sign of Army stripes or Confederate bars?”

She shook her head. “No, no. He wasn’t wearing nothing like that. Except...except there is something bad wrong with his arm. His left one; it was tied up, kinda, like it was hurt.”

“Maybe that’s why he seemed so poorly to you, then.”

“Steve,” she said, in a voice she usually reserved for reminding him his rent was due, “would you just go and have a look see? I’d sleep sounder tonight knowing that you’d looked him over.”

Her eyes were steely, stern, and Steve found himself unwilling to argue with her. Something, he thought wryly, that she well and truly knew.

“All right,” he said, holding up his hands in surrender. “Give me a minute to make myself respectable and I’ll go talk to him. What room's this man in?”

Mrs. Hill squared her shoulders in victory. “Number four,” she said. “Across the hall, the nearest one to the stairs. He insisted.”

“Did he now?” That was something. “Huh. Happen to say where he was from or where he was headed?”

“All he said was that he was out here looking for somebody. Didn’t say who, didn’t say where.” Her hand was on the doorknob, her face suddenly thoughtful. “Tell you the truth, sheriff, I don’t think he knows.”

Steve washed his hands and his face and put on a clean shirt, which struck him as an extravagance, but he’d already sent that day’s down to the wash. Besides, if this man was trouble, he’d hardly be intimidated by a sheriff in a holey undershirt and his suspenders.

He thought about putting on his gun. Thought about it. Decided to go about things a different way.

There was no sound coming from behind the man’s door when he approached, not a flicker of even a snore. Outside, the night had drawn all the way in and only the gas lamps outside the saloon offered any solace; there was no hint of the moon at all.

Another month and fall would be gone. The snows would roll down from the mountains, thick and wild, and they’d be lucky to see mud again until spring. The winter was the worst time, the hardest time to get outside of his head. Well, he thought, raising his knuckles, no use worrying about that just yet. One problem at a time.

He knocked easy, like a friendly neighbor, and waited.

The door opened a crack. Inside, a kerosine lamp was turned low, and it gave the shaggy head a kind of ethereal glow, one that obscured the man’s face. “Yeah?” a low voice said abruptly.

“How do you do?” Steve said. "My name is Rogers. I’m across the hall from you, just there. I hope you’ll excuse me for interrupting your evening, but Mrs. Hill mentioned that you were here and that you seemed to be injured. Wanted to see if there was anything I could do.”

There was a long pause, so long that Steve thought maybe the man hadn’t heard him. “My name,” he said again, “is Rogers, and--”

“I heard you the first time. Just not sure what you think you can do. You don’t look like a doctor to me.”

“I’m not. But I can send word to her, if you want.”

“Her?” The man’s mouth curled. “You’ve got a lady doctor?”

Steve felt a flush of annoyance. “She’s the best medical hand in three counties. You need to see her or not?”

Suddenly, the door swung open and the man skirted along behind it, left only his voice to guide the way. “Maybe you should take a look first. Seeing how you’re so concerned and all. Would hate to drag the lady out in the dark for nothing.”

Steve hesitated, kicked himself for not wearing his gun. It might not have done any good, but it would’ve made him feel a hell of a lot safer. Mrs. Hill was right; there was something off about this man. But he made his boots move, made his voice stay friendly and steady: “Sure enough.”

He was a good three steps inside before the man closed the door and gestured towards the lamp. “Over there,” he said in that sandpaper voice. “You’ll need some light, I reckon.”

Steve could see more of the stranger now. He had long, lanky hair and slim, powerful shoulders. His clothes were on the new side and he wasn’t wearing his boots; he moved silent in his bare feet, his movements precise and controlled. He reminded Steve of a marksman, a crackshot man in his regiment who’d moved like that, a cat, who never seem to so much as snap a twig as they moved through the forests of Virginia chasing Jackson’s army, then Lee’s.

The thought startled him, a bolt of unwelcome lightning. The marksman was one of those things Steve didn’t think about, had trained himself not to dwell on, and yet this man, this stranger, had only to slide through the shadows to summon it up. It was damned unsettling.

Steve set his jaw and he realized the man was watching him from the edge of the circle of light. He couldn’t see the man’s eyes or his expression but he felt like a field mouse in the sights of a hawk. “Well,” he said, “you want me to see it or not? Where is it now that you’re hurt?”

The stranger said: “It’s my arm.”

He stepped into the light and turned his body, gave Steve a good look at his left side. At his left arm.

Steve swore. “Good god, man!”

“It looks worse than it feels, now.” The man dipped his head, hid his face behind a curtain of hair. “Don’t feel nothing from my shoulder down. Usually keep it tied up like so people don’t do like you. And to keep it out of the way.”

The arm was twisted, scarred, like it’d been broken again and again and never set right, never left to have heal. It hung from the man’s body like an afterthought, a dead branch from an otherwise healthy tree.

“Who did this?” Steve said. He took a step closer and resisted the urge to touch the thing, to feel its brokenness out. He wanted to soothe the man, minister to pain the man claimed was long since gone. It was an odd instinct and yet one that he had to fight to ignore. “Who did this to you?”

The man sighed. “I was at Andersonville,” he said. “You heard of that place?”

“Hell on earth, they say. For prisoners, anyway.”

“Mmm.” The shaggy head bobbed. “Our Reb jailers made out ok. At least until things got real hairy.”

“I’ve never heard of them torturing anybody, though. Not like this.”

“No food, no water, no shelter. Thousands of men living and dying in the open air, in the bleeding sun, in the rain. That ain’t torture to you, Rogers?”

Steve’s face ran hot. “I didn’t say that. But that’s not the same thing as this, mister.”

The stranger raised his eyes, stared straight into Steve’s. “A different kind of pain, is all. A different sort of dying.”

Something in Steve went still, like a creek when the wind stops. It was like Mrs. Hill had said: it felt like the man was looking right through him, as if he could peer through Steve’s waters and straight down to the muddiest bottom.

“I know you,” the man said certain.

“No,” Steve said. “You don’t.”

“I do. I’d bet my life on it.” A chuckle, soft and hollow. “I’m beginning to think I already have.”

There was a fire in Steve’s gut, an intense, bone-shaking fear. “I’ve never met you,” he heard himself say.

“How can you be so sure about that?” the stranger said, his voice reedy now, no more scratch. “You don’t even know my damn name.”

He moved before Steve could say a word and grabbed the lamp, held it high beside his face, casting his whole body in light. “My name’s James Buchanan Barnes,” he said. “Bucky. Don’t you remember me, Cap?”


End file.
